In my previous post, I wrote that Tony Di Bart’s ‘The Real Thing’ must have been the most recent #1 that I’d never previously heard. Well, the very next chart-topper is probably just as forgotten…

Inside, by Stiltskin (their 1^st and only #1)

1 week, from 8^th – 15^th May 1994

Luckily, though, my dad once owned a ‘Best Rock Album Ever…’ sort of compilation released sometime around 1994. In amongst all the Free, the Boston, and the Blue Oyster Cult, the compilers had clearly felt the need for something more contemporary. What better track to include, then, than that year’s big rock hit: Stiltskin’s ‘Inside’. Which means that this lumpy, grungy, one-hit wonder takes me right back to my childhood.

This should be a pretty cool moment for chart watchers. Grunge was the sound of the early-nineties, though it had never troubled the top of the charts until now. (By May ’94, the genre was on its last legs, Kurt Cobain having died just a month earlier…) Anyway, this is a very heavy, very sweaty, very hairy number one single, the hardest rocking since Iron Maiden brought our daughters to the slaughter. Listening to it now, for the first time in two decades, the chorus is a classic of the genre.

But it also feels a little like Grunge-by-AI. Listen and you can hear rip-offs of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ in the quiet-loud chorus, and ‘Black Hole Sun’ in the two chiming notes during the verses. I swear to God there’s something by Pearl Jam buried in there, too, though I can’t quite root it out. People online have compared it to ‘Today’ by Smashing Pumpkins, but I don’t personally hear it. Basically, the songwriters have taken elements of the best grunge bands, smushed them up, and made a pretty decent song.

The lyrics are apparently based on Plato’s ‘allegory of the cave’, making this potentially the first UK #1 to reference the ancient Greek philosopher. To my ears, though, it sounds like the worst sort of Year 9 poetry: Strong words in a Ganges sky, I have to lie, Shadows move in pairs… culminating in the motivational slogan: If you believe it, Don’t keep it all inside… (To be fair, I was a fan of the fat man starts to fall line as a kid…)

‘Inside’ also loses a few more street-cred points from the fact that the song was written to order for a Levi’s jeans commercial (making this the fourth number one to come from a Levi’s ad, though the first that isn’t a re-release of an older track). A man called Peter Lawler wrote the song, and plays all the instruments on this recording. He needed a vocalist, and after some auditions found Ray Wilson, a Scottish singer/guitarist. This first incarnation of the band released only one album, and two more low-charting singles, but they reformed and have carried on to this day, in an ever-changing line-up with Wilson as the only constant. (He also spent four years as lead-singer for Genesis, replacing Phil Collins.)

‘Inside’ was probably fortunate to find itself on a compilation called ‘Best Rock Album Ever’ – right place, right time – and is similarly fortunate to hold the title of the UK’s sole grunge chart-topper. But variety is the spice of life, and I’m glad it sneaked its week at number one. Sadly, the fate that confirms once and for all if a record has been lost to the mists of time has indeed befallen ‘Inside’… It’s not on Spotify.